Treatment Programs

Harvard Program for Refugee Trauma

The Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma has spent 25 years caring for the health and mental needs of survivors of mass violence and torture through a combined practice of clinical experience and medical research.

While events of human violence may occur on just a single day, their impact on survivors and their families and can last a lifetime.

The complex multiple effects of extreme violence on human beings demand equally complex methods for discovery and treatment. Observing and caring for the scars of torture on a survivor's body requires different skills than appreciating the inner suffering of a survivor of sexual violence. Some effects of violence are deeply personal and individualized; others seem to be almost universal.

To understand the suffering and resiliency created by human aggression throughout the world, HPRT has used many separate but interlocking methods to generate new, effective therapeutic insights. These methods and practices include knowledge gained from clinical experience, qualitative and quantitative research, epidemiology, oral histories, and the arts.